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In this paper we propose a mathematical model of cancer tumour occurrence in a quasi twodimensional epithelial tissue. Basic model of the epithelium growth describes the appearance of intensive movement and growth of tissue when it is damaged. The model includes the effects of division of cells and intercalation. It is assumed that the movement of cells is caused by the wave of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), which in turn activated by the chemo-mechanical signal propagating along tissue due to its local damage. In this paper it is assumed that cancer cells arise from local failure of spatial synchronization of circadian rhythms. The study of the evolutionary dynamics of the model could determine the chemo-physical properties of a tumour, and spatial relationship between the occurrence of cancer cells and development of the entire tissue parameters coordinating its evolution through the exchange of chemical and mechanical signals.

This work is devoted to creation of static atomic model of two surfaces in contact at electric diamond grinding: single-points diamond and material grinded of them. At the heart of the work there are issues of computer visualization of these surfaces at the molecular level, since traditional mathematical description does not possess sufficient visualization to demonstrate some aspects of the atomic tribology of metal cutting to simultaneously occurring the different, by their physical nature, processes. And in the electric diamond grinding blends effect of several processes simultaneously: mechanical, electrical and electrochemical. So the modeling technique proposed by authors is still the only way to see what is happening at the atomic level, cutting material of single-point diamond.

In this paper, we proposed a two-dimensional chemo-mechanical model of the growth of invasive carcinoma in epithelial tissue. Each cell is modeled by an elastic polygon, changing its shape and size under the influence of pressure forces acting from the tissue. The average size and shape of the cells have been calibrated on the basis of experimental data. The model allows to describe the dynamic deformations in epithelial tissue as a collective evolution of cells interacting through the exchange of mechanical and chemical signals. The general direction of tumor growth is controlled by a pre-established linear gradient of nutrient concentration. Growth and deformation of the tissue occurs due to the mechanisms of cell division and intercalation. We assume that carcinoma has a heterogeneous structure made up of cells of different phenotypes that perform various functions in the tumor. The main parameter that determines the phenotype of a cell is the degree of its adhesion to the adjacent cells. Three main phenotypes of cancer cells are distinguished: the epithelial (E) phenotype is represented by internal tumor cells, the mesenchymal (M) phenotype is represented by single cells and the intermediate phenotype is represented by the frontal tumor cells. We assume also that the phenotype of each cell under certain conditions can change dynamically due to epithelial-mesenchymal (EM) and inverse (ME) transitions. As for normal cells, we define the main E-phenotype, which is represented by ordinary cells with strong adhesion to each other. In addition, the normal cells that are adjacent to the tumor undergo a forced EM-transition and form an M-phenotype of healthy cells. Numerical simulations have shown that, depending on the values of the control parameters as well as a combination of possible phenotypes of healthy and cancer cells, the evolution of the tumor can result in a variety of cancer structures reflecting the self-organization of tumor cells of different phenotypes. We compare the structures obtained numerically with the morphological structures revealed in clinical studies of breast carcinoma: trabecular, solid, tubular, alveolar and discrete tumor structures with ameboid migration. The possible scenario of morphogenesis for each structure is discussed. We describe also the metastatic process during which a single cancer cell of ameboid phenotype moves due to intercalation in healthy epithelial tissue, then divides and undergoes a ME transition with the appearance of a secondary tumor.

Chemotaxis plays an important role in morphogenesis and processes of structure formation in nature. Both unicellular organisms and single cells in tissue demonstrate this property. In vitro experiments show that many types of transformed cell, especially metastatic competent, are capable for directed motion in response usually to chemical signal. There is a number of theoretical papers on mathematical modeling of tumour growth and invasion using Keller-Segel model for the chemotactic motility of cancer cells. One of the crucial questions for using the chemotactic term in modelling of tumour growth is a lack of reliable quantitative estimation of its parameters. The 2-D mathematical model of tumour growth and invasion, which takes into account only random cell motility and convective fluxes in compact tissue, has showed that due to competitive mechanism tumour can grow toward sources of nutrients in absence of chemotactic cell motility.

In the paper three characteristic scales of a biological system are proposed: microscopic (gene's size), mesoscopic (cell’s size) and macroscopic level (organism’s size). For each case the approach to modeling of circadian rhythms is discussed on the base of a time-delay model. At gene’s scale the stochastic description has been used. The robustness of rhythms mechanism to the fluctuations has been demonstrated. At the mesoscopic scale we propose the deterministic description within the spatially extended model. It was found the effect of collective synchronization of rhythms in cells. Macroscopic effects have been studied within the discrete model describing the collective behaviour of large amount of cells. The problem of cross-linking of results obtained at different scales is discussed. The comparison with experimental data is given.

Investigation of the influence of external fields on living systems is one of the most interesting and rapidly developing areas of modern biophysics. However, the mechanisms of such an impact are still not entirely clear. One approach to the study of this issue is associated with modeling the interaction of external fields with internal mobility of biological objects. In this paper, this approach is used to study the effect of external fields on the motion of local conformational distortions — kinks, in the DNA molecule. Realizing and taking into account that on the whole this task is closely connected with the problem of the mechanisms of regulation of vital processes of cells and cellular systems, we set the problem — to investigate the physical mechanisms regulating the motion of kinks and also to answer the question whether permanent and periodic fields can play the role of regulators of this movement. The paper considers the most general case, when constant and periodic fields are switching on and off asynchronously. Three variants of asynchronous switching on/off are studied in detail. In the first variant, the time intervals (or diapasons) of the actions of the constant and periodic fields do not overlap, in the second — overlap, and in the third — the intervals are putting in each other. The calculations were performed for the sequence of plasmid pTTQ18. The kink motion was modeled by the McLaughlin–Scott equation, and the coefficients of the equation were calculated in a quasi-homogeneous approximation. Numerical experiments showed that constant and periodic fields exert a significant influence on the character of the kink motion and regulate it. So the switching on of a constant field leads to a rapid increase of the kink velocity and to the establishment of a stationary velocity of motion, and the switching on of a periodic field leads to the steady oscillations of the kink with the frequency of the external periodic field. It is shown that the behavior of the kink depends on the mutual arrangement of the diapasons of the action of the external fields. As it turned out, events occurring in one of the two diapasons can affect the events in the other diapason, even when the diapasons are sufficiently far apart. It is shown that the overlapping of the diapasons of action of the constant and periodic fields leads to a significant increase in the path traversed by the kink to a complete stop. Maximal growth of the path is observed when one diapason is putting in each other. In conclusion, the question of how the obtained model results could be related to the most important task of biology — the problem of the mechanisms of regulation of the processes of vital activity of cells and cellular systems is discussed.

Hemostatic system serves the organism for urgent repairs of damaged blood vessel walls. Its main components – platelets, the smallest blood cells, – are constantly contained in blood and quickly adhere to the site of injury. Platelet migration across blood flow and their hit with the wall are governed by blood flow conditions and, in particular, by the physical presence of other blood cells – erythrocytes. In this review we consider the main regularities of this influence, available mathematical models of platelet migration across blood flow and adhesion based on "convection-diffusion" PDEs, and discuss recent advances in this field. Understanding of the mechanisms of these processes is necessary for building of adequate mathematical models of hemostatic system functioning in blood flow in normal and pathological conditions.

Despite the widespread use of cancer chemotherapy drugs, the molecular mechanisms of action of many of them remain unclear. Some of these drugs, such as taxol, are known to affect the dynamics of microtubule assembly and stop the process of cell division in prophase-prometaphase. Recently, new spatial structures of microtubules and individual tubulin oligomers have emerged associated with various regulatory proteins and cancer chemotherapy drugs. However, knowledge of the spatial structure in itself does not provide information about the mechanism of action of drugs.

In this work, we applied the molecular dynamics method to study the behavior of taxol-bound tubulin oligomers and used our previously developed method for analyzing the conformation of tubulin protofilaments, based on the calculation of modified Euler angles. Recent structures of microtubule fragments have demonstrated that tubulin protofilaments bend not in the radial direction, as many researchers assume, but at an angle of approximately 45◦ from the radial direction. However, in the presence of taxol, the bending direction shifts closer to the radial direction. There was no significant difference between the mean bending and torsion angles of the studied tubulin structures when bound to the various natural regulatory ligands, guanosine triphosphate and guanosine diphosphate. The intra-dimer bending angle was found to be greater than the interdimer bending angle in all analyzed trajectories. This indicates that the bulk of the deformation energy is stored within the dimeric tubulin subunits and not between them. Analysis of the structures of the latest generation of tubulins indicated that the presence of taxol in the tubulin beta subunit pocket allosterically reduces the torsional rigidity of the tubulin oligomer, which could explain the underlying mechanism of taxol’s effect on microtubule dynamics. Indeed, a decrease in torsional rigidity makes it possible to maintain lateral connections between protofilaments, and therefore should lead to the stabilization of microtubules, which is what is observed in experiments. The results of the work shed light on the phenomenon of dynamic instability of microtubules and allow to come closer to understanding the molecular mechanisms of cell division.

The work focuses on mathematical modeling of light influence mechanisms on macromolecular composition of microalgae batch culture. It is shown that even with a single limiting factor, the growth of microalgae is associated with a significant change in the biochemical composition of the biomass in any part of the batch curve. The well-known qualitative models of microalgae are based on concepts of enzymatic kinetics and do not take into account the possible change of the limiting factor during batch culture growth. Such models do not allow describing the dynamics of the relative content of biochemical components of cells. We proposed an alternative approach which is based on generally accepted two-stage photoautotrophic growth of microalgae. Microalgae biomass can be considered as the sum of two macromolecular components — structural and reserve. At the first stage, during photosynthesis a reserve part of biomass is formed, from which the biosynthesis of cell structures occurs at the second stage. Model also assumes the proportionality of all biomass structural components which greatly simplifies mathematical calculations and experimental data fitting. The proposed mathematical model is represented by a system of two differential equations describing the synthesis of reserve biomass compounds at the expense of light and biosynthesis of structural components from reserve ones. The model takes into account that a part of the reserve compounds is spent on replenishing the pool of macroergs. The rates of synthesis of structural and reserve forms of biomass are given by linear splines. Such approach allows us to mathematically describe the change in the limiting factor with an increase in the biomass of the enrichment culture of microalgae. It is shown that under light limitation conditions the batch curve must be divided into several areas: unlimited growth, low cell concentration and optically dense culture. The analytical solutions of the basic system of equations describing the dynamics of macromolecular biomass content made it possible to determine species-specific coefficients for various light conditions. The model was verified on the experimental data of biomass growth and dynamics of chlorophyll $a$ content of the red marine microalgae Pоrphуridium purpurеum batch culture.

Mechanical properties of eukaryotic cells play an important role in life cycle conditions and in the development of pathological processes. In this paper we discuss the problem of parameters identification and verification of viscoelastic constitutive models based on force spectroscopy data of living cells. It is proposed to use one-dimensional continuous wavelet transform to calculate the relaxation function. Analytical calculations and the results of numerical simulation are given, which allow to obtain relaxation functions similar to each other on the basis of experimentally determined force curves and theoretical stress-strain relationships using wavelet differentiation algorithms. Test examples demonstrating correctness of software implementation of the proposed algorithms are analyzed. The cell models are considered, on the example of which the application of the proposed procedure of identification and verification of their parameters is demonstrated. Among them are a structural-mechanical model with parallel connected fractional elements, which is currently the most adequate in terms of compliance with atomic force microscopy data of a wide class of cells, and a new statistical-thermodynamic model, which is not inferior in descriptive capabilities to models with fractional derivatives, but has a clearer physical meaning. For the statistical-thermodynamic model, the procedure of its construction is described in detail, which includes the following. Introduction of a structural variable, the order parameter, to describe the orientation properties of the cell cytoskeleton. Setting and solving the statistical problem for the ensemble of actin filaments of a representative cell volume with respect to this variable. Establishment of the type of free energy depending on the order parameter, temperature and external load. It is also proposed to use an oriented-viscous-elastic body as a model of a representative element of the cell. Following the theory of linear thermodynamics, evolutionary equations describing the mechanical behavior of the representative volume of the cell are obtained, which satisfy the basic thermodynamic laws. The problem of optimizing the parameters of the statisticalthermodynamic model of the cell, which can be compared both with experimental data and with the results of simulations based on other mathematical models, is also posed and solved. The viscoelastic characteristics of cells are determined on the basis of comparison with literature data.